Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 specs allegedly leak days before reveal

With the launch of new high-end graphics cards from Nvidia just days away, Videocardz alleges that it has gotten its hands on the final specs sheet for the GeForce GTX 980, which will likely be the company’s premier single-GPU card once it launches.

According to Videocardz, the GeForce GTX 980 will be powered by a base clock running at 1.126GHz, and boost clock of 1.216GHz, and a memory clock of 1.75GHz. The 780Ti, which is the card that it will be replacing, has base, boost, and memory clocks of 875MHz, 928MHz, and 1.75GHz, respectively.

The 980 has 4GB of GDDR5 RAM, which is 1GB more than the 780Ti has (3GB). However, the 780Ti has a larger memory bandwidth of 336GB/s, compared to the 980’s 224GB/s. The 980 will have five video ports in total: DVI-I, HDMI 2.0, and three DisplayPort 1.2 connections.

If the 980 is a clear winner in any particular area, it’s power consumption. It has a pair of 6-pin power connectors, and has a TDP of 165-watts. Meanwhile, the 780Ti’s TDP is almost 100-watts higher; 250-watts to be exact.

This means that the 980 could offer significantly better performance, while also consuming notably less power. This was a similar theme for Nvidia when it launched the 750Ti earlier this year.

Recently, GTX 980 benchmark scores reportedly leaked out. Though those numbers included 3DMark Fire Strike scores from 980s clocked at multiple speeds, the version that ran at 1.127GHz scored 12,328. Meanwhile, Videocardz is saying that the version which will launch this week has a 1.126GHz base clock speed.

So, if the 980 scores in the 12,300 range in Fire Strike, and a AMD Radeon R9 290X clocked at 1.05GHz scores around 11,200 in the same test (according to Videocardz’s numbers), the biggest factor that determines whether PC enthusiasts flock to the 980 in droves will likely be price.

As of now, the latest rumor indicates that the GeForce GTX 980 will cost $599, though that price is “unconfirmed” at this point. Meanwhile, you can get a 290X running at 1.05GHz for as low as $530 as of this writing.